Daily Archives: August 15, 2019

Carl Coppenrath can remember the days when it seemed bluefin tuna fishermen could walk on water. In the heyday of the 1980s, the market was so flush in Menemsha that fishermen could literally walk across a harbor packed with a fleet of commercial vessels lined up at the end of the day to sell their catch for top dollar. The mystique and allure of catching the torpedo-shaped fish that can weigh over 1,400 pounds brought glory and the prospects of such wealth that it awoke the romantic reimagination of the old whaling days of the Island. So much so that it spawned the popular cable TV series Wicked Tuna and lit up social media with photos and boastful tales of the trophy fish. “It’s like an addiction . . . >click to read< 21:29

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Some of the largest and most powerful animal and environmental groups – including the Pew Charitable Trust, the U.S. Humane Society, the Conservation Law Foundation and Oceana – sent representatives to the hearing. They urged National Marine Fisheries Service to take immediate action to protect the whale, including proposals that even the team tasked by the fisheries service to come up with its whale protection plan had dismissed, such as offshore closures and ropeless lobster fishing. >click to read< 20:58

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A review and potential changes to the New York State marine fisheries licensing system will be the subject of a meeting at East Hampton Town Hall on Wednesday at 6 p.m. Last month, the State Department of Environmental Conservation issued a draft report on a review of fisheries licensing, following meetings held last year,,, The draft report stresses the decline of fish stocks beginning in the 1980s and the federal and state regulations that followed, including quotas, allocations, seasonal restrictions, and trip limits. It says that “there are too many fishermen and too much >click to read< 18:12

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Headline – Trump admin throws wrench into offshore wind plans – The Trump administration is ordering a sweeping environmental review of the burgeoning offshore wind industry, a move that threatens to derail the nation’s first major project and raises a host of questions for future developments. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a division of the Interior Department, is ordering a study of the cumulative impact of a string of projects along the East Coast. The review comes in response to concerns from fishermen about the impact of offshore wind development on East Coast fisheries. Must watch video! >click to read< 17:15

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With less than half of the 10-year average of fall Chinook salmon expected to return to the Columbia River this year, the two-state Columbia River Compact opened commercial gillnetting in the lower river and in pools upstream of Bonneville Dam for treaty commercial gillnetting.,,, The Compact met this week, Monday, Aug. 12, at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s regional office in Ridgefield to consider early fall Chinook mainstem gillnetting, deciding on 5 nine-hour overnight periods, for a 45-hour total for commercial non-treaty gillnetters beginning Aug. 14 and ending Aug. 29. >click to read< 16:34

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In the southeastern corner of Washington state, wheat goes down the river, while salmon are trucked up around dams on the road. “And taxpayers pay for all of it,” said Sam Mace, with Save Our Wild Salmon. “Isn’t there some option of switching this around,” Mace asked, >(Salmon Cannon?)< “the fish on the river and the wheat off the river?” In Western Washington, it could seem like a no-brainer: The orcas of the Salish Sea are hungry, because there are fewer and fewer of the salmon they depend on. Removing the four dams on eastern Washington’s Snake River would help the salmon that use the river to spawn–and thus the whales that eat the salmon. But the view from eastern Washington is different. There, the dams are important to the state’s wheat growers, fourth- and fifth-generation farmers who are worried about their future. >click to read< 13:33

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No one can spend a lifetime as a lobsterman without a deeply imbedded kernel of optimism. While that characteristic might not be obvious in everyone, Stonington lobsterman Clayton Joyce would seem to have it in abundance. Until just recently, lobster fishing has been slow. So slow in fact that the much anticipated shortage of lobster bait, primarily herring, hasn’t had much impact. >click to read< 12:24

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The word “extinction” has been thrown around a lot lately by environmental groups,,, Large, well-funded, out-of-state environmental groups would have you believe that these whales are going extinct and that Maine fishing gear entanglement is a major reason why. These groups have proposed things like ropeless fishing and refuse to believe that ideas like this are not practical in Maine. Can you imagine how a fisherman could set his 20- to 30-trap trawl into water 300 to 400 feet deep, not knowing where any of his competitors’ trawls might have been set days before? >click to read< 11:37

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Inventing climate change solutions or technology could you make you a fortune, according to liberal media favorite: Bill Nye “The Science Guy.” Nye shared an F-bomb dropping video on Instagram on Aug. 13. He said that if his typical warning that the “oceans are rising” wasn’t enough to make people care, he had another reason for them to take action on climate change. “I’m gonna level with you. The real reason you should do your part to combat climate change is — It’ll make you filthy f—king rich” Nye shouted. Video >click to read< 11:12

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The owner of North Carolina seafood company Capt. Neill’s Seafood of Columbia, Phillip Carawan, pleaded guilty Tuesday to selling close to 200,000 pounds of crab meat from Asia and South America while marketing it as Atlantic blue crab. The U.S. attorney said the untrue label gave Carawan an advantage, raking in more than $4 million thanks to the mislabeled crab from 2012 to 2015. >click to read< 10:31

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As Alaska’s salmon fisheries transition away from sockeye and kings to pinks and chums, the harvest results so far look mixed. May, June and July are the main harvest months for sockeye salmon across Alaska, beginning in Prince William Sound and reaching a crescendo in Bristol Bay throughout July. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game forecasted a total sockeye harvest of 41.7 million sockeye salmon for the 2019 season. Some sockeye are still being harvested, but as of Aug. 11, the count stood at 53.7 million sockeye, more than 43.1 million of which came from Bristol Bay. Bristol Bay’s harvest blows away even the large harvest from 2018 of 41.7 million,,, >click to read< 10:07

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The owner of a fish plant near Lewisporte is taken aback by the news that processors from outside Newfoundland and Labrador are going to be allowed to buy locally caught cod, when she says her operation has been denied that same ability. “I was completely floored. I couldn’t believe it,” said Alisha Hodder, who runs Hodder’s Shellfish in Stoneville with her husband. The Stoneville plant processes sea urchin,,, >click to read< 09:21

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Access for UK boats to fish in EU, Norwegian or Faroese waters after the UK leaves the EU will be a matter for negotiation. Should access to fishing be agreed, fishermen in the over 12m fleet will have to ensure their vessel has an IMO number to be licensed to fish outside UK waters when we leave the EU. The UKFAs are urging fishermen to apply to the IMO now to make certain they have registered in good time for the UK’s departure. >click to read< 08:29

NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?

While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here

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